Contour Biennale 8, curated by Natasha Ginwala considers an uncertain scenography in which we are urged to set up encounters as actors, agents and dissidents. Against the backdrop of Mechelen’s historic role as a legal stronghold for medieval Europe, the curatorial approach engages an over 400-year old juridical past of the Great Council that first sought to address the Dutch, French and German territories through rational jurisprudence as a region. From the vestiges of Europe’s first courthouse, what might it mean to survey the field of social justice and its implements as media archaeology such that justice itself is considered a “medium” that is simultaneously a performative, ethical and aesthetic operation.

The upcoming edition brings together over 20 international and local artists as well as art collectives working in lens-based media, sound, performance, drawing, installation, and publishing with newly commissioned and recent works spread across historic venues such as the city’s first town hall and historic seat of the Great Council, the Schepenhuis, and contemporary sites in Mechelen, Belgium.

Contour Biennale 8 engages a polyphonic view, recalling the acoustic history of the Lowlands—a multiplicity of voices that become heard as a plural consciousness, and at times as states of discord. Setting a stage to question the preconceived boundaries between the perception of legality and illegality within today’s experience of statehood, such a transaction may enable us to further develop formations of affinity and dissonance while enduring the very nature of contemporary judgement in a global community enmeshed within the bonds of neoliberal capital.

Contour Biennale 8 Polyphonic Worlds: Justice as Medium will be on view from 11 March until 21 May 2017. The exhibition is open from 9 to 17 h during weekdays, and between 10 and 18 h on weekends. The Biennale is closed on Wednesdays.